The Butterflies of the British IslesSouth, Richard
Science
The Butterflies of the British Isles
South, Richard
Butterflies -- Great Britain; Butterflies -- Great Britain -- Identification; Lepidoptera -- Great Britain
The butterfly emerges in about ten to fourteen days, according to
temperature.
The male is violet-blue with the veins rather darker; the outer margin
is narrowly bordered with blackish, and there are some black dots on the
outer margin of the hind wings; the fringes are white, and there is a
slender tail on the hind wings. The female is brownish, tinged with
violet towards the base; the hind wings have black spots on the outer
margin, and some of these are inwardly edged with orange; the tails are
slightly longer than those of the male.
All the available information concerning the occurrence of this species
in England has already been given. No doubt the localities from which
specimens were recorded have been closely investigated during the past
twenty years, but no further captures of this butterfly have been
recorded. This seems to indicate that it is not really indigenous, but
that its presence here may possibly have been due to accidental
introduction.
The spring form, _polysperchon_, is smaller than the specimens occurring
in the summer, but so far that form has not been seen in England.
The species is widely distributed over Central and Southern Europe, and
its range extends through Northern Asia to Amurland, Corea, and Japan.
It is also represented in Northern and Central America by var.
_comyntas_, and has been recorded from Australia.
The Silver-studded Blue (_Lycæna argus_ = _ægon_).
The male of this butterfly (Plate 105) is purplish-blue with a black
border on the outer margins, and sometimes black dots on that of the
hind wings. The female is sooty-brown, powdered to a greater or lesser
extent with blue scales on the basal area; there is generally a series
of orange marks forming a more or less complete band on the outer margin
of the hind wings, and sometimes on the fore wings also. The under side
is bluish-grey in the male, and brownish-grey in the female; the black
spots are ringed with white, and on the fore wings there is one at the
end of the discal cell and a series of seven beyond; the hind wings have
from three to five spots before the discal spot, and a curved series of
seven beyond; there is a black-edged orange band on all the wings, and
beyond this on the hind wings there is a series of metallic blue centred
spots; hence the English name of the butterfly, given to it by Moses
Harris, which is certainly more suitable than Petiver's "Lead Argus."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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